


I'm not the kind that likes to tell you

by verity



Category: Newford - Charles de Lint, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Artists, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-01-22
Updated: 2011-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-14 23:49:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's house has a painting that is real. Eventually, he'll make another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm not the kind that likes to tell you

**Author's Note:**

> thedeadparrot is completely responsible for the title of this and the fact that ALL I CAN LISTEN TO IS NEW ORDER. Also, thanks to etothepii for fusion fic inspiration.

Sherlock's favorite painting was in in the library.

There were a lot of paintings in their house. One hung in his room: a ship, cresting a wave. He was young enough that the house still seemed vast and unbounded, like it might contain any number of paintings in any number of rooms.

The painting in the library was still his favorite. It was his mother's, too.

"That was painted by Papa's cousin Violet," she said, picking him up so that he could get a closer look. He reached out to touch the canvas, but she held him just out of reach. "No, Sherlock. Just look."

He never could resist the temptation to try to touch her. She looked so real, her eyes large and luminous, gazing past him into the room. One hand held a scroll at her side, and the other stretched forward, eternal flame cupped in her hand. "Sophia," he said.

"That's her name," his mother agreed. "Sophia means wisdom," she added, as if she hadn't told him already half a dozen times.

Linen draped from Sophia's shoulders in long, clean lines, pooling around her bare feet, like her wavy copper hair pooled around her shoulders. The background of the painting was vague and shadowy; it suggested more a cave than the night sky.

Sherlock reached out his hand again, and his mother batted it away gently.

\- - - - -

Some nights he stole out of his bed, eluded nurse and Mycroft alike, and crept into the library just to look at the painting. He would turn on the closest lamp, its light muted by a heavy glass shade, and stare up at the woman in the painting, her feet the brightest point, her features shading into darkness.

\- - - - -

One evening he crept in to find her sitting at a chair by the cold and empty hearth. His gaze swept rapidly between frame and chair, chair and frame, but she remained stubbornly in both places: holding fire in one and and scowling at its absence from the other.

"It's all right," was the first thing she said to Sherlock. "I don't feel the cold like you do." The brightness of her hair was muted by the blue light of the waxing moon that shone through the windows.

Sherlock clutched his blanket more closely around his shoulders and said nothing. He kept looking at her, which his mother told him it wasn't polite to do to people, but Sophia was a painting, so he thought she might be an exception. On closer inspection, he could see some differences: the Sophia sitting before him had her hair pulled back into a loose braid, and she was wearing a shirt and jeans, like something the other boys in the village would wear to play in. Her feet were still bare. She lifted one and touched her toes to the iron grate.

"You visit me a lot." Sophia looked toward him now. It was queer to be the focus of that gaze, the one that eluded him every time he studied her on canvas. He nodded. "What are you looking for?"

Her toes were twined among the blackened metal curlicues, he noticed, ducking his head. Sherlock didn't like to talk - he never had enough words for what he wanted to say, and now was no exception. He wasn't sure how she could be real-and-not-real, in the painting or out of it. The other paintings weren't like hers. The painting of the ship wasn't the ship's, no matter how crisp the waves or striking the mast.

"Come here," she asked, and he did, because he was curious and not because he was biddable. She stretched out one long finger (he knew, without looking, that it was shapely and white) and lifted up his chin. Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. When he looked into them, the room around them and all its riches seemed lustreless in comparison. "You wanted to know," she told him. "The answer is yes."

He reached up then, to touch her face, and Sophia didn't pull away. Her cheek was smooth and soft, like his mother's. "Where do you go?"

"Wrong question." She smiled; her face was a little too small to hold all of it. "The world I come from is far, and the price for gaining it is high."

"But where do you _go_?"

"Anywhere," she said. "But I'm always here."

\- - - - -

The next morning, he awoke in his bed, covers still neatly tucked around him like nurse had done the night before.

He never could tell, later, whether it had been real or a dream.


End file.
